6 ms·

I think I found another one, and it looks like it swapped twice: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Aesthetic.esthetic http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=

• Chromozon 12y ago
  Very cool.
• lstamour 12y ago
  via http://artvoice.com/issues/v12n6/theaterweek http://artvoice.com/issues/v12n6/theaterweek and its suggestions, I found: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=calibre.caliber http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=calibre.caliber (1936) http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=manoeuvre.maneuver http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=manoeuvre.maneuver (1943) http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=sombre.somber http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=sombre.somber (1929) Slightly less clear cut but still strong: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=goitre.goiter&format=count http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=goitre.goiter&format=c... (1935) http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=lustre.luster http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=lustre.luster (1935) http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=meagre.meager http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=meagre.meager (1927) Might be interesting to graph all these next to editor or leadership changes, as well as style guide revisions. Or actually, current events, now that I look at some of the years where it's been sharpest.
• thret 12y ago
  http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=disk.disc http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=disk.disc
  • gpmcadam 12y ago
    I'm not sure this is a valid comparison as 'disk' and 'disc' aren't synonymous, as evidenced by the lack of a clear pattern of change in the graph.
  • flomo 12y ago
    What this shows is the old NY Times house style oddity where they described CDs as "compact disks" rather than using the trademark Compact Disc. (Pre-1980, it is not clear to me.)
    • CamperBob2 12y ago
      True. The NYT editorial standards have always been downright bullheaded, even with trademarks ("I.B.M.") where they have no authority to contradict anyone else's usage.
• snogglethorpe 12y ago
  "Tokyo" replaced "Tokio" in about 1930: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=tokyo.tokio http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=tokyo.tokio ["Tokyo" is somewhat closer to the Japanese pronunciation] "Muslim" replaced "moslem" in about 1988: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=moslem.muslim http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=moslem.muslim [Apparently for good reason: http://hnn.us/article/524 http://hnn.us/article/524 ] "Peking" was replaced by "Peiping" in 1930, but it was back to "Peking" in 1962, and then finally changed to "Beijing" in 1985: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=peking.beijing.peiping http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=peking.beijing.peiping
  • oska 12y ago
    The history of, and explanations for, the varieties of names for Beijing ('northern capital') is so complex and detailed that it gets its own wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Beijing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Beijing See also [1]: Bosat Man, Backhill/Peking/Beijing (1990), which is not currently included as a reference in the above wikipedia article. [1] http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp019_peking_beijing.pdf http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp019_peking_beijing....
  • NAFV_P 12y ago
    Tokyo used to be called 'Edo'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo
  • DanBC 12y ago
    Constantinople vs Istanbul shows a nice clean switch: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=constantinople.istanbul http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=constantinople.istanbu... Burma vs Myanmar is messier http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=burma.myanmar http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=burma.myanmar
    • pessimizer 12y ago
      That one is a bit controversial because 'Burma' was changed to 'Myanmar' by the military dictatorship.
• spingsprong 12y ago
  Rumania vs Romania http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=rumania.romania http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=rumania.romania
  • taejo 12y ago
    Possibly even Roumania vs Rumania vs Romania: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=rumania.romania.roumania http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=rumania.romania.rouman...
• SixSigma 12y ago
  http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=istanbul.constantinople http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=istanbul.constantinopl... This was by edict "The international name Constantinople also remained in use until the Turkish Postal Service Law of March 28, 1930, according to which all foreign countries were asked to solely use the name Istanbul also in their languages and their postal service networks."
  • DanBC 12y ago
    Compare that to Myanmar / Burma, who also ask people to use the Myanmar form. Since it's not a democratic government there is some resistance to the new name. http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=burma.myanmar http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=burma.myanmar
    • stan_rogers 12y ago
      There was resistance to Istanbul as well; the hit song Istanbul (Not Constantinople) dates from 1953.
  • paul_f 12y ago
    Surely I'm not the only one who instantly thought of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsRuurcTTSk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsRuurcTTSk
• rdwallis 12y ago
  More interesting for programmers: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=program.programme http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=program.programme And programme seems to be having a very slight resurgence since 2012.
  • jeffbr13 12y ago
    It's "programme" in British-English for everything except "computer program" (in my experience). Probably because most programmer-culture is centred in North America. I imagine that it's simply some NYT writer(s) using the British-English spelling, rather than a wider cultural trend, unless somebody is aware of any other examples?
    • DanBC 12y ago
      One of the articles is about the World Food Programme, so maybe that's it? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/business/international/fungus-cripples-coffee-production-across-central-america.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/business/international/fun... EDIT: Another is quoting a report from 1856 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/arts/music/bar-and-bathroom-lines-molto-adagio.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/arts/music/bar-and-bathroo...
• jsmeaton 12y ago
  This is one I've been wondering about for awhile: http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=cooperation.co-operation http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=cooperation.co-operati... I thought the change happened somewhere around the 80-90's. Guess it depends on the country also.
  • yxhuvud 12y ago
    It is too bad it doesn't differentiate between cooperation and coöperation.
    • _delirium 12y ago
      Google's version includes coöperation, but it has negligible usage: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cooperation%2Cco-operation%2Cco%C3%B6peration&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cooperation%2C... On the other hand it's possible OCR is missing some of those ¨ and screwing up the data.
  • _delirium 12y ago
    The Google Books dataset suggests the crossover point was around 1905 in AmE, but not until the late 1970s in BrE (modulo the usual caveats about how their data isn't necessarily a representative sample): AmE: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cooperation%2Cco-operation&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=17 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cooperation%2C... BrE: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cooperation%2Cco-operation&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=18 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cooperation%2C...
  • IvyMike 12y ago
    I think there's a general trend towards dropping the hyphen in common words. Knuth talks about this in his discussion over "e-mail" v "email": http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/email.html http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/email.html
• pacaro 12y ago
  The first of these is still spelled æsthetic in some places. The general convention in US spelling of replacing æ and œ with e seems more jarring to me than other differences in orthography between US and commonwealth English I can't run the nytlabs thing because a) windows phone, and b) when I try to enter æ I get another character... (potentially see (a))
  • _delirium 12y ago
    It's typically spelled aesthetic in American English nowadays (without the ligature). In that one the NYT was a hold-out in the other direction: esthetic never overtook aesthetic in general American usage, though for a period in the 20th century it looked like it might (encyclopedia did definitively displace encyclopaedia). It looks like the NYT wholesale made the ae->e switch around 1920, and then in the case of aesthetic finally realized it wasn't going to happen, and reverted to common usage in 2000.
    • levosmetalo 12y ago
      Seems like US English was bussy replacing German umlaut characters ä, ö, ü (transcribed in ascii as ae, oe, ue) with americanized version.
      • _delirium 12y ago
        These words aren't German borrowings, so that isn't related at all. The ae in this class of words is from Latin æ (ultimately from Greek αι). The ae->e shift was an attempt at spelling simplification, to remove some vestigial Latinisms, but only partially succeeded.
        • waqf 12y ago
          Confusingly, though, German does render Latin æ, œ as ä, ö (ästhetisch, ökonomisch)
          • _delirium 12y ago
• sspiff 12y ago
  Nice list. Seems like they did a "major" reform around the turn of the century, many examples I've seen seem to be replacement around 1999/2000.